For fans of Between the Buried and Me, The Black Dahlia Murder, and Opeth

I never expected Wretched’s 2010 sophmore release, Beyond the Gate, to be as good as it was. It was leaps and bounds ahead of its predecessor, The Exodus of Autonomy, and featured some of the most impressively original songwriting I had heard from an American death-metal band in a very long time. Well, the Northern Carolina metalheads have returned with their follow-up, Son of Perdition, last month, and though it may not be as huge a leap forward as Beyond the Gate was, it’s another strong offering from one of the most underrated emerging bands in death metal.

For fans of: The Faceless, Between the Buried and Me, Through the Eyes of the Dead, The Black Dahlia Murder, Opeth, All Shall Perish, etc.

Every so often, I walk into a record store with the intent of finding something new. Not just some new run of the mill band that plays the same riffs I’ve heard a dozen times already, but something entirely new. Well, something led me to pick up Wretched’s Beyond the Gate on a whim, and it was definitely one of my favorite and most dynamic albums of 2010. And, no, it’s not just because they shared all but two letters as the name of our site.